Help on the Alexandrian Diatribe

Dr. Bob · Feb 29, 2004

AA and other "only" sect keep making a barrage of snide attacks at the Alexandrian/Egyptian documents.

I think it is racially motivated as well simply parroting a plethora of WRONG information.

Eastern Orthodox documents are good
Western Orthodox documents are evil

Now we know that the Western documents do NOT reflect the AV1611. But is that the only basis for the vitriol?

I personally LIKE it. BTW, it had nothing to do with "Alexandria" in Egypt. Think monastery in the Sinai where God miraculously preserved it. That's closer to Jerusalem than Cairo! Or the Vaticanus, again preserved when most of the old Greek documents were being discarded for the Latin.

Looking for information on WHY the hatred. Thanks.

robycop3 · Feb 29, 2004

Dr. Bob, could it be that the Alex mss "aint the docs from which the KJB was made"?

Askjo · Mar 1, 2004

CT men focus on how men picked their favorite apographs where modern versions were based.

TR men focus on how God preserved His Words in accurate apographs where the KJV, the Tindale Bibles and other accurate Bibles prior to the KJV were based.

robycop3 · Mar 2, 2004

Askjo, BY WHOSE AUTHORITY do YOU choose what you think GOD picked?

Did not Jesus die for the people of Alexandria also? Did not the great preacher Apollos come from Alexandria? Evidently he received the true word of God while there; he had to be taught about Jesus, but before that, according to Scripture, he was a great preacher of the truth of the O.T. Could Apollos have been behind the Alex NT mss, at least to some degree?

The TR was revised many times. If it was so accurate, why all the revisions? Which one is perfect?

skanwmatos · Mar 3, 2004

Those who prefer the Critical Text over the Traditional Text are simply working from a different list of a priori assumptions.

Those who prefer the Critical Text accept, for the most part, the assumptions of Greisbach as modified by Westcott and Hort:

Per Greisbach:

1. The shorter reading, if not wholly lacking the support of old and weighty witnesses, is to be preferred over the more verbose.

2. The more difficult and more obscure reading is preferable to that in which everything is so plain and free of problems that every scribe is easily able to understand it.

3. The harsher reading is preferable to that which instead flows pleasantly and smoothly in style.

4. The more unusual reading is preferable to that which constitutes nothing unusual.

5. Expressions less emphatic, unless the context and goal of the author demand emphasis, approach closer to the genuine text than discrepant readings in which there is, or appears to be, a greater vigor.

6. The reading that, in comparison with others, produces a sense fitted to the support of piety (especially monastic) is suspect.

7. Preferable to others is the reading for which the meaning is apparently quite false, but which in fact, after thorough examination, is discovered to be true.

8. Among many readings in one place, that reading is rightly considered suspect that manifestly gives the dogmas of the orthodox better than the others.

9. With scribes there may be a tendency to repeat words and sentences in different places having identical terminations, either repeating what they had lately written or anticipating what was soon to be written, the eyes running ahead of the pen. Readings arising from such easily explained tricks of symmetry are of no value.

10. Others to be led into error by similar enticements are those scribes who, before they begin to write a sentence had already read the whole, or who while writing look with a flitting eye into the original set before them, and often wrongly take a syllable or word from the preceding or following writing, thus producing new readings.

11. Among many in the same place, that reading is preferable which falls midway between the others, that is, the one which in a manner of speaking holds together the threads so that, if this one is admitted as the primitive one, it easily appears on what account, or rather, by what descent of errors, all the other readings have sprung forth from it.

12. Readings may be rejected which appear to incorporate a definition or an interpretation, alterations of which kind the discriminating critical sense will detect with no trouble

13. Readings brought into the text from commentaries of the Fathers or ancient marginal annotations are to be rejected, when the great majority of critics explain them thus.

14. We reject readings appearing first in lectionaries, which were added most often to the beginning of the portions to be read in the church service, or sometimes at the end or even in the middle for the sake of contextual clarity, and which were to be added in a public reading of the series, [the portions of which were] so divided or transposed that, separated from that which precedes or follows, there seemed hardly enough for them to be rightly understood.

15. Readings brought into the Greek manuscripts from the Latin versions are condemned.

Per Westcott and Hort:

1. Older readings, manuscripts, or groups are to be preferred.

2. Readings are approved or rejected by reason of the quality, and not the number, of their supporting witnesses.

3. A reading combining two simple, alternative readings is later than the two readings comprising the conflation, and manuscripts rarely or never supporting conflate reading are text antecedent to mixture and are of special value.

4. The reading is to be preferred that makes the best sense, that is, that best conforms to the grammar and is most congruous with the purport of the rest of the sentence and of the larger context.

5. The reading is to be preferred that best conforms to the usual style of the author and to that author's material in other passages.

6. The reading is to be preferred that most fitly explains the existence of the others.

7. The reading is less likely to be original that combines the appearance of an improvement in the sense with the absence of its reality; the scribal alteration will have an apparent excellence, while the original will have the highest real excellence.

8. The reading is less likely to be original that shows a disposition to smooth away difficulties (another way of stating that the harder reading is preferable).

9. Readings are to be preferred that are found in a manuscript that habitually contains superior readings as determined by intrinsic and transcriptional probability.
Click to expand...

Those who prefer the Traditional Texts most often accept the assumptions of other textual critics such as Hills, Scrivener, and Burgon:

Per Burgon:

1. Antiquity or Primitiveness

2. Consent of witnesses, or number

3. Variety of evidence or catholicity

4. Respectability of witnesses

5. Continuity or unbroken tradition

6. Evidence of the entire passage or context

7. Internal considerations or reasonableness
Click to expand...

It should not be startling that we arrive at different conclusions seeing that we begin with different a priori assumptions.

robycop3 · Mar 4, 2004

Right you are, Skan. The problem is deciding who's right. I have faith in GOD to guide me since this is a matter beyond my capacity to correctly deduce on my own. I've said all along that God has "dif'rent strokes for dif'rent folks", and to try to limit Him to just one course is wrong. I believe God did not choose to preserve the original human writings of His word for other reasons besides His knowing that some nut would make icons of them and WORSHIP them.

The New-Age-Liberals and the ultra-conservatives are both wrong. It was GOD who created diversity among people, and it was GOD who met the needs of the various diverse groups He created.

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